Hearing that, I instinctively clapped my hands over my mouth to hold in a gasp, my entire face going beat red in no time flat. But...Surely I had to be hearing things, right? I mean, it couldn't actually be a-- On my actual birthday, Mum didn’t need to wake me – I was up early and excited. When I walked into the kitchen, still in my pyjamas, she greeted the birthday boy with a big hug and a soppy kiss. She showed me to my cards and gifts on the table.

I was a brat growing up. My parents were the most permissive you ever saw. They let me get away with anything. They gave me anything I wanted. I had a wonderful life with them. At least I thought so.I was not given any time to ease into these rules or consequences. Rather, three days after she and my dad returned from their honeymoon, she felt I had done a ‘piss poor job’ of cleaning my room and needed proper motivation, in the form of a hairbrush.

The strange part was, she wearing all of her clothes, the LAX hoodie she had from college, the blue denim jeans and was still wearing her sneakers. She smiled at me and said "You and Kyle playing the Xbox?" At the time, I also mostly ignored her presence thinking, how could my dad possibly last with someone THAT young?To an outsider, my stepmom is the trophy my dad supposedly needs to feel like he's still got "it." People will comment that she looks like my dad's daughter. (Seriously, people have mistaken her for my dad's kid). And people always look baffled when I tell them my stepmom is five years older than me. When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor’s wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn’t believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. The brush served me well, if painfully, growing up, and it has served my four children in much the same way. If the OP doesn't like it, she can request custody of her son. Believe me, raising someone else's children is not easy, specially as they reach adolescence. And if you have the bio-mom questioning the stepmother's methods, that is also not easy.